Fear X
The greatest terror is not even that our lives could be upset without warning, but without reason. Fear X is a psychological thriller about a mall security guard named Harry Caine (John Turturro), whose sole obsession is discovering the identity of the mysterious killer of his wife, Claire (Jacqueline Ramel). After discovering a stray film negative, he journeys from his home in Wisconsin to Montana to track down this faint lead. After his probing draws the attention of local cop named Peter Northrup (James Remar), Harry must confront his fears and ask himself how far he will go for closure.
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Fear X is a movie about watching and observing. The film begins with a shot that evokes theatricality, as Harry parts the curtains to watch his wife walking away from him in the snow. It is a scene from a dream that haunts Harry; she looks back at him as she approaches the house across the street, and a look of fear overtakes Harry. The first time we see Harry's face is only after she has looked back at him, as though he exists only because she sees him in this dream logic. The scene has a voyeuristic element to it, as though Harry can only understand Claire by watching her from a distance, or even that she exists only when he watches her. Fear X intentionally avoids any meaningful expository flashbacks; what we see of Claire is always dream-like--either a fantasy or a memory colored by Harry's obsessive memory. The Wisconsin snow falling down resembles the grainy VHS tapes his co-worker smuggles for him to track down the identity of Claire's killer, which happened in the parking garage of the mall where Harry works. Dreams are riddles of the subconscious as well as the lingering mental detritus of our waking life. Harry has devoted his daylight hours to a self-martyring investigation of the mysterious killer, as if Harry's life ended with Claire's; he speaks to this in an encounter with Peter. Harry exists in a kind of "hell"--a paranoid and meaningless, Sisyphean routine of seeking meaning where none can be found. Harry's mind has also become unreliable; his experiences as depicted are spurious manifestations of his subconscious. Colleagues offer him hollow sympathy, pleading for him to move on from the death of his wife; but at the beginning of the film--after his dream--the radio describes the shooting which claimed his wife and another (vaguely intimated to be a cop) as though it were recent news. How could it be that this is recent news, and yet his colleagues could be so callous as to suggest he "move on" so soon after his loss? It is more likely that Harry's deteriorating state of mind means that he hears what he wants to hear from it, and what Harry--and the audience--sees and experiences cannot be uniformly trusted.
Harry's attempts to make sense of Claire's senseless murder propels him on an investigation that is intensive and detailed, but also depicts a man who has lost perspective on the world and other people in it. Harry has devoted a wall in his home to his lists of suspects and brief descriptions of them on blue and peach note cards, radiating out from a news article about the attack. This is his "evidence" drawn from the surveillance tapes he has documented and his own observations while on the job, looking like literal pieces of a puzzle. When Harry leaves his home to go to work, he looks around at the suburban homes surrounding his, which are colored a bit like his note cards--all very uniform and placed like his layout, with the white of the snow resembling the wall of his living room. This parallel suggests that Harry studies the "people" on his wall, because he subconsciously needs to understand the real people of the world. Since the audience has no reliable reference point for Harry prior to Claire's death, it is difficult to say whether he has always struggled with this kind of social disconnect, or if it is due to his grief. Harry is polite and soft-spoken, but there is an unease and unnatural quality to his interactions with others, as though he were surrounded by an alien species. When he confronts an old man who stole a cardigan, he tries to act with the authority of a security guard, but there is a nervousness to Harry that makes it seem like he is the one who is more afraid.
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Fear X superficially exists within the confines of a "normal" world, but gradually reveals itself to be more like a persistent dream or fantasy, as if Harry never really woke up from his dream at the start of the film. In keeping with Refn's signature style, places like the hotel are lit with oppressive, nightmarish red lights, suggesting the flames of hell, rage, and murder. Nicolas Winding Refn often pays homage to some of cinema's most evocative and memorable works. Harry's obsessive need to seek truth from a television set recalls David Cronenberg's own film about the blurry barrier between reality and digital delusion, Videodrome; even the pilfered security tape Harry watches that painfully depicts his wife's death has a low-res, snuff-like element to it. The dreamlike aesthetic is also reminiscent of David Lynch's body of work, especially Mulholland Drive, since Harry's obsessive way of trying to make sense of his pain is by psychologically "hacking" his life and memories. There are also several visual motifs and an overall sense of eerie unease in Fear X that recalls Lynch's debut film, Eraserhead; both Harry and Henry are nervous, quiet fellows and both stay in creepy hotels. Fear X also shares common elements with another film starring John Turturro as a man suffering a breakdown: Barton Fink by the Coen brothers. Both films feature an unsavory hotel clerk and other residents who are simultaneously friendly and threatening--in Fear X, Harry is solicited by an assertive prostitute (Amanda Ooms), rather than being hounded a pushy and boisterous insurance salesman. Although Fear X was released in 2003, the paradigm between Harry and Peter--and the conspiracy surrounding their connection--is similar to 2008 Austrian film, Revanche, suggesting that Refn's works may have inspired others in the same way that he was inspired making this film.
It is ironic that in losing himself in his obsession to discover the mystery of his wife's death, Harry has found a kind of purpose, albeit a machine-like routine, devoid of any other interests. This existential trap he has forged for himself has forced his subconscious to seek a means of escape--this is the reason for the strange image of a face behind a thin film of red flesh when the camera zooms into the back of Harry's head. Harry even turns to his dreams for clues--irrational as it may be--convincing him to sneak into the house across from his, which is where he finds the ominous stray film negative. No logical reason exists to suggest why this film negative would have any connection to his "case", but as Fear X unfolds, it appears to be the key detail...the clue that only someone as devoted as Harry could have hoped to find. There is a delusional madness to this discovery, and the specter of hallucination and fantasy is raised again and again. The images he develops from it are cryptic, but in them he sees clues that point him to a town in Montana called Morristown; one picture--which he reads by reflecting the image in a mirror--points him to a small diner. These are cliche detective story kinds of clues, the kind which might be found on Harry's shelves, and the kind which might have led him to become a security guard, wanting to "catch the bad guys". One photo shows a woman with her child, who turns out to be Peter's wife, Kate (Deborah Kara Unger), along with their son. When Harry stays at the hotel in Montana, it is the same one he and Claire visited after he found out she was pregnant, which turned out to be their last vacation together. He requests to stay in the same room in this disquieting hotel, and for the most part, he doesn't leave at all. What the audience discovers about Peter and his life comes in the form of a side story, breaking away from Harry's obsessive narrative. It could be argued that Harry's paranoid fantasy about a conspiracy behind his wife's death comes from his fractured psyche, and that everything concerning Peter, Kate, Morristown, and so on is an elaborate dream of his, designed to try to help him make sense of everything. This is preceded by a scene where the police conveniently contact Harry and inform him that they have "new information about his wife's death", coincidentally after he has a vision of happier days with Claire; the camera zooms into the back of Harry's head, implying the possibility that this is all just in his mind. The subsequent scene feels deliberately like it was taken from a police procedural, with the cops essentially interrogating Harry about the death of his wife. Details are mentioned about her past--plot hooks that never fully materialize; it is as though Harry were in the process of trying to "write" one narrative to resolve his madness, then decided that this story didn't fit his overarching vision, and abandoned it for the "stray film negative" plot instead. Audiences watching Fear X will be left second-guessing just what is real in Harry's life and what is fantasy, a sly and devious turn to unseat the viewer's reliance on the objectivity of the camera--is seeing really believing?
Recommended for: Fans of a deceptively clever psychological thriller, which is more satisfying for audiences that are willing to look for a deeper meaning beyond what is presented at face value. Fear X may appear superficially derivative, but this reveals more about the mindset of Harry and how his obsession has overtaken his ability to definitively separate fact from fiction.
Harry's attempts to make sense of Claire's senseless murder propels him on an investigation that is intensive and detailed, but also depicts a man who has lost perspective on the world and other people in it. Harry has devoted a wall in his home to his lists of suspects and brief descriptions of them on blue and peach note cards, radiating out from a news article about the attack. This is his "evidence" drawn from the surveillance tapes he has documented and his own observations while on the job, looking like literal pieces of a puzzle. When Harry leaves his home to go to work, he looks around at the suburban homes surrounding his, which are colored a bit like his note cards--all very uniform and placed like his layout, with the white of the snow resembling the wall of his living room. This parallel suggests that Harry studies the "people" on his wall, because he subconsciously needs to understand the real people of the world. Since the audience has no reliable reference point for Harry prior to Claire's death, it is difficult to say whether he has always struggled with this kind of social disconnect, or if it is due to his grief. Harry is polite and soft-spoken, but there is an unease and unnatural quality to his interactions with others, as though he were surrounded by an alien species. When he confronts an old man who stole a cardigan, he tries to act with the authority of a security guard, but there is a nervousness to Harry that makes it seem like he is the one who is more afraid.
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Fear X superficially exists within the confines of a "normal" world, but gradually reveals itself to be more like a persistent dream or fantasy, as if Harry never really woke up from his dream at the start of the film. In keeping with Refn's signature style, places like the hotel are lit with oppressive, nightmarish red lights, suggesting the flames of hell, rage, and murder. Nicolas Winding Refn often pays homage to some of cinema's most evocative and memorable works. Harry's obsessive need to seek truth from a television set recalls David Cronenberg's own film about the blurry barrier between reality and digital delusion, Videodrome; even the pilfered security tape Harry watches that painfully depicts his wife's death has a low-res, snuff-like element to it. The dreamlike aesthetic is also reminiscent of David Lynch's body of work, especially Mulholland Drive, since Harry's obsessive way of trying to make sense of his pain is by psychologically "hacking" his life and memories. There are also several visual motifs and an overall sense of eerie unease in Fear X that recalls Lynch's debut film, Eraserhead; both Harry and Henry are nervous, quiet fellows and both stay in creepy hotels. Fear X also shares common elements with another film starring John Turturro as a man suffering a breakdown: Barton Fink by the Coen brothers. Both films feature an unsavory hotel clerk and other residents who are simultaneously friendly and threatening--in Fear X, Harry is solicited by an assertive prostitute (Amanda Ooms), rather than being hounded a pushy and boisterous insurance salesman. Although Fear X was released in 2003, the paradigm between Harry and Peter--and the conspiracy surrounding their connection--is similar to 2008 Austrian film, Revanche, suggesting that Refn's works may have inspired others in the same way that he was inspired making this film.
It is ironic that in losing himself in his obsession to discover the mystery of his wife's death, Harry has found a kind of purpose, albeit a machine-like routine, devoid of any other interests. This existential trap he has forged for himself has forced his subconscious to seek a means of escape--this is the reason for the strange image of a face behind a thin film of red flesh when the camera zooms into the back of Harry's head. Harry even turns to his dreams for clues--irrational as it may be--convincing him to sneak into the house across from his, which is where he finds the ominous stray film negative. No logical reason exists to suggest why this film negative would have any connection to his "case", but as Fear X unfolds, it appears to be the key detail...the clue that only someone as devoted as Harry could have hoped to find. There is a delusional madness to this discovery, and the specter of hallucination and fantasy is raised again and again. The images he develops from it are cryptic, but in them he sees clues that point him to a town in Montana called Morristown; one picture--which he reads by reflecting the image in a mirror--points him to a small diner. These are cliche detective story kinds of clues, the kind which might be found on Harry's shelves, and the kind which might have led him to become a security guard, wanting to "catch the bad guys". One photo shows a woman with her child, who turns out to be Peter's wife, Kate (Deborah Kara Unger), along with their son. When Harry stays at the hotel in Montana, it is the same one he and Claire visited after he found out she was pregnant, which turned out to be their last vacation together. He requests to stay in the same room in this disquieting hotel, and for the most part, he doesn't leave at all. What the audience discovers about Peter and his life comes in the form of a side story, breaking away from Harry's obsessive narrative. It could be argued that Harry's paranoid fantasy about a conspiracy behind his wife's death comes from his fractured psyche, and that everything concerning Peter, Kate, Morristown, and so on is an elaborate dream of his, designed to try to help him make sense of everything. This is preceded by a scene where the police conveniently contact Harry and inform him that they have "new information about his wife's death", coincidentally after he has a vision of happier days with Claire; the camera zooms into the back of Harry's head, implying the possibility that this is all just in his mind. The subsequent scene feels deliberately like it was taken from a police procedural, with the cops essentially interrogating Harry about the death of his wife. Details are mentioned about her past--plot hooks that never fully materialize; it is as though Harry were in the process of trying to "write" one narrative to resolve his madness, then decided that this story didn't fit his overarching vision, and abandoned it for the "stray film negative" plot instead. Audiences watching Fear X will be left second-guessing just what is real in Harry's life and what is fantasy, a sly and devious turn to unseat the viewer's reliance on the objectivity of the camera--is seeing really believing?
Recommended for: Fans of a deceptively clever psychological thriller, which is more satisfying for audiences that are willing to look for a deeper meaning beyond what is presented at face value. Fear X may appear superficially derivative, but this reveals more about the mindset of Harry and how his obsession has overtaken his ability to definitively separate fact from fiction.